An Ultimate Dichotomy

It seems popular to divide the world into dichotomies. This rings especially true when I think of people talking about forces at work: Good vs. Evil, light vs. dark, black vs. white. Though that last seems to have fallen out of favor in America due to racial tensions, those dichotomies are the common ones. Heaven vs Hell: how many stories pit these two forces against each other? Light side of the force vs. the dark side. It's common in so many stories.

Usually goes something like this: “There are two forces at work in the world, in competition, in constant struggle. Both trying to get the upper hand. You are needed!” Or the main character, or some random prophecy making you the dude/chick who will unbalance/save everything. There's a new wave of stories helping teens feel special. The teen in the stories is odd, stands out in a society of conformity. And they don't know why! Turns out, they are special! They are the special son of a Greek god. Or the only one who is not part of one group but all three. Or has a special taste for vampires. Or whatever. It puts them into the conflict: world vs. this group, and this group equals me. Makes me very important.

I digress.

Because it's not the teen stories that I'm thinking of, but the dichotomy. Good vs. evil, light vs. dark, cold vs. heat. But what is often said of these things? That one is in existence, and the other is a void. Evil is not an entity in and of itself, some say, because then we'd have a counter point to the Creator. Instead, Evil is an absence of Good. Just as cold does not exist on it's own, but rather is an absence of heat. And dark simply means there is no light there. You can't shine a dark light, or make a darkness, all you can do is block light. You don't make cold, you remove heat until things freeze. So it seems evil does not create, but rather is what happens when goodness goes away.

So what does it mean then to say that there are two forces at work in the world? If evil is just an absence of good, how can it be a side in the ultimate struggle of whatever? Perhaps we mean that on one side are those who are filled with good, and on the other are those who lack it. But then it is a spectrum, so how good or un-good do you need to be to be on a side?

Or perhaps we're wrong to say that evil/cold/dark do not exist on their own. Yes, we can only make them by removing good/heat/light, but we do measure those things. Light has lumen, heat has temperature. If we say it is only 1 kelvin, we are not saying we removed X kelvins of heat. Because there is no absolute heat or light or goodness measure. So how much have removed? Or how much have we prevented? Perhaps we can only conceive of these elements coming into existence by removal, but perhaps their existence is there already, since we measure them not as a removal, but on a scale.

Or perhaps we're thinking of the wrong dichotomy. If indeed each of these dichotomies exist of one thing, and the absence of that thing, then perhaps the ultimate This vs. That is Existence vs. Non-existence. Powered by entropy, shown itself in conflict. So the states of being could be measure as Tranquility vs. Conflict. We can measure both of these separately. The more tranquil, the less conflict. The more conflict, the less tranquil. But unlike light and dark, we can have both at the same time. I can be tranquil in my mind, as I ponder my wife and our relationship, while also stress and in conflict with the morons who are making me late for my flight home. I can have both.

I have heard it said often “peace is more than the absence of war.” War exists. It is not a lack of peace. For I can have lacks of peace that do not make war. Additionally lack of war does not make peace, for I can have an oppressive government, or people starving, or people struggling to live, even with no war.

Into the formless void, the Creator, who was ever in tranquil, peaceful communion and relationship with the triune self, spoke Stuff. Earth, water and land, stars, light and dark, sun and moon, night and day, animals, plants, people. Into the chaos of Entropy and the Nothing, the always existent Someone spoke and made Something. And the Nothing has been trying to get even ever sense, injecting conflict where there should be tranquility, motivating us to uncreate the creation.

Media Reflection: Human Target

I recently "discovered" the show "Human Target." (I love Hulu!) I really like the show, and really like the fact that Luta likes the show as well, so we have one more show to watch together that we both love! The main character, Christopher Chance, is in the protection business: people who have someone trying to kill them come to him so that he can "protect" them. Actually, they come so he can eliminate the threat, not just guard them. And he is good at this because of his former career: he used to be an assassin himself, one of the best. The show is predictably violent, and he is predictably thrown into horrible odds so he can show how awesome he is.

But despite that predictable element, I find the show awesome to watch. The characters have a good blend, and are pretty consistently written. The actors are fun to watch, with great expressions. And the episodes have a balance I like between telling the story behind the characters and showing a thrilling plot that begins and ends in one episode. The action is good, and I'm a sucker for action even (or perhaps especially) when it is over the top and ridiculous.

In the first episode ("Pilot"), Christopher Chance tells people "No one deserves to die." That's why he protects them. Of course he also kills the people trying to kill them (he doesn't like loose ends), but generally he doesn't do it in cold blood. But he never says "people shouldn't die" just that they don't deserve to, so he tries to stop the deliberate assassination of people. In a later episode ("Baptiste"), his former apprentice reminds Chance that he used to say "Everyone deserves to die, as far as someone is concerned." So now Chance is confronted with the inconsistency that he is still willing to kill, just not in cold blood, even though he claims to have done a full switch from "everyone deserves to die" to "no one deserves to die."

Underneath this is an interesting theological issue. There is great support in the Bible that people should not kill one another. That since people are made in the image of God, they should be respected and not killed. So, no one deserves to die. Especially when we consider the original state of creation in the Garden of Eden, it seems reasonable to me to assume that there was no death. So in the final verdict, death shouldn't be here at all. But on the other hand, there is sin in the world, so in some sense people do deserve to die. People sin, sin must be punished, therefore death is deserved.

That is an over-simplication of the issue and arguments, of course, but I think the main point there is accurate: we both deserve and do not deserve to die. There is also the element of the agent delivering the verdict of "deserving." Jesus warns us that the measure we judge others will be used to judge ourselves (Matt 7:1-3), so it would be a good idea not to be quick to judge others deserving of death! In fact we might then want to conclude that no one is deserving of death, so that we will be judged "not deserving" as well. It would seem that only God should determine who is deserving or not. This brings us back to the previous issue: sin makes us deserving of death, even if in the original perfect world we were not.

The beauty and hope of Christianity is that through the sacrifice of Jesus, we can receive ultimate forgiveness. And once we do so, we are given the gift of life. We go from deserving to die, to being granted the right to not die.

So then Christopher Chance's claim that "no one deserves to die" can really be seen as a statement of redemption. Not only is he trying to redeem himself for his past actions, not only does the statement show his own redemption in his changed perspective, but it also speaks to greater redemption. It speaks to the fact that while, yes, we might do things that make other people want us dead, in the final judgment we don't have to deserve to die. We have a way out.

All of us can be protected from death, if only we choose.

The Bucket List

Today in CPE we watched and discussed the movie "The Bucket List." Pretty decent movie about facing death, and some of the hospital experience. In discussing it, our supervisor asked if we had a bucket list. I didn't really think I did, but realize there are some things I would like to do before I kick the bucket.

1) Visit six of the seven continents (the ones that are really populated) for at least a few days if not a total of a week or more. (So far: 3 out of 6)

2) Be in all 50 USA states, even if only driving through them though I would like to make a stop in each (Can't remember how many I've been in so far)

3) Do a multi-day hike to traverse a major park or trail (like the Sheltowee Trace trail)

4) Publish a book

5) The movie mentioned two questions that Ancient Egyptians believed they would be asked before entering heaven: Have you experienced joy in life? Has your life brought joy to others? I would certainly like to easily answer both of those in the affirmative before I die. Not just, did I experience a singular moment, or grant one moment of joy, but overall.

6) Drive a (race) car at ridiculous speeds (on a track).

So far that's what I've come up with.

Grief

One of the books I am reading for CPE is My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. (Riverhead Books, New York, 2000). I encountered this on p. 38, and found it to be a wonderful and freeing word on grief, and I have nothing to add to it.

Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt.

Grieving is not about forgetting. Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.

.....

      Grief.
      I pull up anchor,
      and catch the wind.

Movie Thoughts: Stranger Than Fiction

I decided to add "movie" to titles so you don't have to accidentally read a spoiler in order to find out that I'm talking about movies. But remember, if I'm talking about a movie, there will probably be spoilers! Hard to discuss the philosophy of a film without discussing the plot, or more particularly key plot points like, say, the ending.

I love Stranger Than Fiction. We saw it in theaters, and I've seen it twice since, and I love it more each time. The clever graphics were great, and I loved the commentary for of the watch: "His wristwatch thought the single Windsor knot made his neck look fat, but said nothing." And it's cute and funny and romantic all around. Many great lines for great characters. I'm not usually a fan of Will Ferrell, but in this one I am.

But more than that, I love some of the thoughts in the film. At first it seemed to wander into the "live your life like it's your last day" genre, whereby people do ridiculous things and prove that all of us should live our lives wantonly, forgetting about responsibility or the future. But in the end, that's not the message of how to live one's life. Sure, by doing so he finally learns how to play guitar, and also starts a relationship with a woman he falls deeply in love with, but by the end of the film he goes back to work. Part of life is work, and work is not always fun. But the message of the film is not that life is having fun and a blast and living dreams and not doing work, but rather that life is in the accessories. Bavarian sugar cookies, wristwatches, good books, rock music, and the like can, literally, save our lives. Why? Because they add the accents and enjoyments to what otherwise all too often becomes a life mired down by the every day routines we have to suffer through. Granted this is a USA film and speaks to the USA situation, which may be avoided elsewhere. However I think the point still holds: if you can't find something to enjoy in life, you probably aren't really living. This doesn't mean quitting jobs until you find one you enjoy (because most of us never will find that job), but it does mean having something in life that you enjoy.

So, "go out and live the life you wish you had" doesn't mean "be irresponsible." Instead, it means "do things you love," which may often mean adding them to the things you don't. But hey, rocking out with classic guitars can make any job seem better, right?

But that's only part of why I love this movie. The other part is when Harold reads the book, and tells Karen to finish it. It's a good book, but I don't think he's sacrificing his life for the sake of career. I think he's doing it because it will save that boy. When Karen is asked why she changed the book, knowing it would not be nearly as good as if she had left it alone, she explains that it is because now Harold knew the ending. Before it was about a man who died at the end but didn't know he was going to die (the inevitability of death being one of the themes). Once he knows, it changes everything, because now the story is not about his death, but about how he handled facing his death. If I leap out in front of a bus on a spur of a moment to save someone, it says something about me: brave, "a bit stupid," loving of that person, caring of others, selfless. It will most likely affect how others interpret my life in general when they reflect back on it, hopefully adding a positive spin, or increasing it.

Everything changes, however, if I get up that morning knowing that by the end of the day I will leap in front of a bus to save a kid. In The Matrix: Revolutions, the Oracle points this out, saying that the real test of a choice is, having made it and now fully knowing the consequences, would one make the same choice again. By knowing in advance that I was going to die by leaping in front of the bus to save the kid, I now have a chance to process the impact. It's not a spur of a moment thing, a reflection on my character through snap judgment, but now it's a reflection on who I am when I have time to plan. And I could plan, and plan to not be there, to not have to save a kid, to not get killed. But if knowing all that, I still decide that saving that kid is more important, and I walk to work, and get smashed, well, that seems to say something very deep about my character.

And that is what Harold does. He reads the end of the book, and knows how his life will end. And yet despite that, he wraps up his life and chooses to let the book finish, chooses to die for the sake of some boy he has never met. And I love the movie because of how Karen puts it. If the book was about some guy dying without knowing it, well fine, kill him, I guess. But now it's about a guy who dies knowing what's coming, who willingly walks into death for the sake of someone else, and Karen says, isn't that the kind of person we want to keep alive?

Yes! Exactly! And so Karen writes a ridiculous ending that saves him, because such a person's life is worth far more than an excellent novel, even one that would mark a career's best work.

I love this movie.

God and Perfection

God, at least from the perspective of the world's major monotheistic religions, is considered to be perfect. Actually others would agree with this it seems, since Aristotle is the one who came up with the idea of God being the Unmoved Mover. This Unmoved Mover is conceived as "being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating." (Check out wikipedia for a bit more) This Unmoved Mover is the beginning of all movement and action in the universe, and yet never moved it-/him-/her-self. In other words, nothing and no one ever moved the Prime (Unmoved) Mover. Probably not hard to see where some could have then concluded that the Christian God is the Prime Mover, first cause of everything.

One reason for imaging a Prime Mover as Unmoved is because everything in motion needs something to have set it in motion. Eventually something needs to never have moved, or else it is just turtles all the way down, and western-type thinkers go nuts. But also wrapped up in this are concepts of perfection. A perfect being never changes, because a perfect being has no need to change into anything. After all, things only change in order to improve, right? And what improvement can a perfect being have? And if one is to never change, one cannot move, because movement involves change of posture, shift in space and time, and other seemingly inconsequential and yet very real changes.

A bit of a problem here, I think, when it comes to God. Because if God is not moving at all, then it raises some questions as to how God is involved in our lives. There are some ways to answer this, but it seems to get very abstract and complicated very fast. And there's a much simpler solution: prefection does not require immobility. If the Trinity tells us that God has been loving and giving from before all time, then we know that even in perfection, God is doing things other than contemplating God's self contemplating (leave it to Aristotle to come up with that anyways). So then, God is ever-loving and ever-giving, not ever-not-moving. In fact it seems that if God is anything, it's ever-moving. Of course if God is everywhere at once then God doesn't really need to move in a human sort of way or by passing through space, but at least God is certainly active. And if God isn't active, God isn't much use, in my opinion. Great, we have something that started us, but that's not love, because love involves interaction and caring, at the very least.

So instead of perfection and unchanging meaning unmoving, what if perfection and unchanging means "not changing in essence?" God can move around, and make things move, but God's essence and character is never changed. God doesn't need to grow or mature or learn new things: That's perfection, I think. But that doesn't mean God isn't involved. And if our human emotions are some reflection upon God, perhaps God can respond to humans. In a sense, we can move God. But only in a certain sense, for God has to have set it up in advance that we can do that. God didn't make us and then say "Well crap, now I can be moved. Boy that sure messes up my vacation." Instead, I think God might have said "If I make people, I want them to be like me so they can know true love and be able to truly worship me. Wellt hat means they have to be able to feel the relationship... and if it's only one sided, it doesn't really count. So, I'll let them spark my emotions." And then God dug hands into the dirt, and molded out Adam. And next thing you know there's messy emotions flying about all over the place, and sure enough, Abraham is working on God's emotions to get him (at least at the moment he was dressed up as a guy) to relent from burning Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes. And while God did still burn the place down, it wasn't because he was unmoved by Abraham's plea, but instead because Abraham didn't get the number low enough (or Lot didn't evangelize enough people, however you want to look at it).

God is not emotionless. I'm not quite sure how God could be love and good without emotions. I know those aren't emotions, but it's hard for me to figure how they can be known and measured and expressed without emotions, and if they aren't known and measured and expressed then are they really there at all? So, if God has emotions, or at least is capable of expressing reactions to people, then Unmoved Mover God isn't. God seems to be some other kind of perfect.

These ideas are not purely my own as much as my own ramblings on other people's ideas. Rodney Clapp I think is the first author where I bumped into this, but I could be wrong about that. I'm sure you could find other philosophers who are actually using footnotes writing about this. But hey, it's a blog, so I can just ramble, right?

To Know

Merriam-Webster has this to say about the word "know":

know
Pronunciation: \ˈnō\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): knew \ˈnü also ˈnyü\ ; known \ˈnōn\ ; know·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English cnāwan; akin to Old High German bichnāan to recognize, Latin gnoscere, noscere to come to know, Greek gignōskein
Date: before 12th century

transitive verb
1 a (1): to perceive directly : have direct cognition of (2): to have understanding of (3): to recognize the nature of : discern b (1): to recognize as being the same as something previously known (2): to be acquainted or familiar with (3): to have experience of
2 a: to be aware of the truth or factuality of : be convinced or certain of b: to have a practical understanding of
3 archaic : to have sexual intercourse with
intransitive verb
1: to have knowledge
2: to be or become cognizant —sometimes used interjectionally with you especially as a filler in informal speech.

In The Shack, the argument is made multiple times that if people really knew God's love, and knew God's nature, then we wouldn't doubt God's goodness when bad stuff happens. God tells Mack that the reason Mack is mad at God, has distance in his relationship with God and others, and keeps getting hung up on the brutal murder of his young daughter Missy, is Mack's lack of understanding of God's love. If Mack just knew God loved him, Mack would be cool with the whole thing. Not to say Mack wouldn't hurt at all, or miss Missy, but he'd understand that God was still good and in control and wouldn't be so upset about it. It seems in part that Mack would be ok because he'd also know that God was hurt by the whole situation as well.

I'm hung up on this "knowing" God loves us. Seems that Young is using it in the sense of 1-a-3, 1-b-3, or some sense of 2. In other words, "knowing" is connected to experience, and is a deep and profound trust in the knowledge. In this case knowing God loves means truly trusting God loves. This is a fine definition of "know" which is often used. I think it was Plato who said that people who know what is good, do what is good; those who don't do good don't really know it, because anyone who knows it, does it.

Call me postmodern, but I have problems with this. "Know" seems like it can be a looser term than that. I think this use of the term places too much reliance on the idea that knowledge based on fact or experience is somehow very solid and reliable. However, someone can come along and debate the truth of that knowledge; a new experience can alter one's perception and interpretation of prevoius experiences and thus question the reliability of former knowledge; memory can get distorted, screwing up one's sense of knowledge... over reliance on "know it means you trust it" drives me nuts. I'd prefer to just throw "trust" or "belief" in there and clear up the whole mess.

Why? I think it's just cleaner than talking about multiple kinds of knowing, like "head knowing" vs. "experiential knowing." A common example uses a chair: I may declare that I know the chair can hold me, and yet not trust it enough to sit in it. On the other hand, I can choose to sit in it, and find through experience that it really can hold me. I think to clarify "knowing" in this case just is confusing. Call the first "think" or "think I know" and the second "trust" or "believe" or "experience." Just drop knowing right out of it. Try this out: I may declare whatever I want about my cognitive acceptance of the chair's ability to hold me, yet until I park my behind in it and let the chair keep me from crashing in embarassing manner onto the floor, I leave room for others to doubt that I trust or believe the chair can actually hold me. If I refuse to sit in it, because I fear crashing, then I don't believe it will hold me.

And now I think we can talk about why it isn't as simple as "knowing" God loves us. Here's the problem: if God loves me, why does bad stuff happen to me? Young's answer is: See, idiot, you don't know God loves you, or you wouldn't ask such a stupid question. Sorry, forgive me, but I'm human. When I think a human loves me, I think that other person 1) won't hurt me and 2) will try to prevent harm from happening to me. When I percieve that person to hurt me, or to fail to protect me, I often question his or her love for me. There's many ways to reconcile this, including: recognizing that people aren't perfect, but that doesn't mean he or she doesn't love me as much as s/he can; recognizing that people are not powerful enough to stop all harm, but again that isn't always a reflection on the reality of love; realizing that my perception may be off, and this spanking could actually be for my good and an act of true love. Thus, my trust in their love may temporarily fade, but I can correct that as I realize it wasn't an issue of their love or lack of it, but something else.

This, however, becomes sticky when I relate it to God. Because if God is perfect, and God is powerful enough to accomplish anything, that leaves only the problem of my perception. But it is incredibly difficult to reconcile certain pains with anything good or loving. Say, the murder of a little girl: how is eternity going to be better because she got raped and slaughtered than it would have been had she led a long, fulfilling life? Sure, people can attempt to answer that question, but the most predictable response to most answers will be a solid fist to the face, delivered by the wounded parent. "How dare you suggest that my daughter would have caused damage enough that her death now is better?" "How dare you suggest that God can love my daugher more than me?" or something along those lines. So, the issue, for me, becomes less a matter of knowing God loves me than God loves me. Somewhere in there, I need to figure out how I can continue to trust and believe in the love of God, when God doesn't demonstrate it the way I expect a human with God's powers were. Or, to put it more personally: I need to figure out how I can continue to trust and believe in the love of God when God doesn't do what I think I would do if I had God's powers in that situation.

Know whatever you want to know. Trust, however, is harder. And in a postmodern world where the ability to know becomes more and more debated, perhaps we should switch the conversation to Trust. Maybe if Mack quit trying to figure out how he could know God loved him even when Missy got killed, but instead decided to trust God anyways, he'd have gotten over it sooner. Not blind trust, but perhaps putting the testing aparatus on hold until the pain quieted down enough to allow a careful inspection of God. Then, perhaps, trust can return.

Jobs, Fulfillment, and Wall-E

I recently watched Wall-E. I love Pixar films, being disappointed only by Cars. And I totally loved Wall-E. I was cracking up, and though it was not only cute but somewhat profound. Sure, it might have beaten the "save the earth" message to death, but since I think we should preserve the earth, reduce our trash and footprint, and not be so lazy and depending on automated technology I don't really have a problem with that message.

I was intrigued by the personalities of the robots in Wall-E. From what I can tell, each bot has a task, or directive. Each bot must fulfill this directive, and in this they find fulfillment. Some directives occur constantly (picking up trash), others from time to time (EVE and M-O, for example, only performing when certain other parameters are met). Sometimes it is one bot acting solo, other times one bot activates another that activates another and so on until all tasks are performed. From a programming perspective, this is pretty simple: integrated loops and functions. In any case, the point is, bots have jobs.

And bots are only happy when they fulfill their job. The more they cannot fulfill their job, the more frustrated and angry and perhaps despondent they become. EVE is angry with Wall-E, not because he is lovestruck and she's not, not because he tags along like a puppy, but because she thinks he's preventing the completion of her task. This is not to say that there aren't other emotions involved (she does seem to actually like him and be sad when his escape pod blows up), but that a bot cannot be happy if the task is not done. Over time or if left alone, it appears that one of two things can happen: 1) the bot modifies the task 2) the bot becomes obsessed with the task. (1) is exemplified in Wall-E: he (i think it's a he) starts collecting interesting junk instead of just disposing of it, and becomes curious about other possibilities in life. But he still performs his job. (2) is exemplified in the psycho ward, and in M-O. The task must be done, and all the time, even if it violates the parameters for the job. The tennis ball server should only serve tennis balls in certain circumstances, presumably on a tennis court and when asked; however, the obsessed one serves tennis balls all the time, at everything. This is a malfunction. Yet M-O begins to border on this when he makes the decision to leave his assigned electro-path in pursuit of "foreign contaminant." He is doing the job assigned, but not within the parameters assigned, thus he's not truly fulfilling his programmed duty.

How much do our jobs determine our happiness? And is it when we do them the way we're told to, or the way we think they should be done? Should our psychological security really be wrapped up in task fulfillment?